


Repairs

by jessalae



Category: Sunny Came Home - Shawn Colvin (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 18:45:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7000099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/pseuds/jessalae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunny came home with a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repairs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cnoocy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cnoocy/gifts).



> Note: some minor violence and blood.

The sun filters in through the faded curtains on the kitchen window. Smoky is stretched out lazily in the biggest patch of sunlight on the linoleum floor, his ears twitching slightly at every chirp from the birds outside. He opens one green eye as Sunny sits down on a creaking kitchen chair, smoothing her dress under her, and sets her burden on the table with a thump. "Mwrrr?" he says.

"Not now, bud,” Sunny says, slipping a headband over her forehead to keep her hair out of her eyes. “Mama’s busy.”

The mahogany box isn't easy to unlock: press here, squeeze there, rotate 90 degrees, lift the top exactly one inch, sweep in with a finger to undo the hidden latch. Sunny sighs with relief at the telltale click, and swings the lid open.

She draws each tool out of its velvet-lined compartment. Bronze dagger, red chalk, vial of cinnamon oil, silver mirror. They look out of place on the cheap white laminate of the table. She considers going to the basement, doing this on the bare concrete floor, but decides against it — she wants to get as much fresh morning air in her lungs as possible, while she’s still on this world. She uncorks the vial of cinnamon oil and wrinkles her nose as its scent fills the room.

_The smell had been her first clue that something was very wrong. The air smelled spicy and smoky, like someone had left a piece of cinnamon toast in the oven too long. When she moved her wrists and found them bound together, opened her eyes and saw the fanged smirk of the guard, it became even more obvious that she was somewhere she shouldn’t be._

_The smell permeated everywhere -- crisp mornings, muggy evenings, city, country, or coast, even down to the dungeons, it all smelled like burnt cinnamon. She almost got used to it, before she was sent back. Almost._

Sunny selects a small brush from the handful inside the box and dips it into the cinnamon oil. Holding her breath, she paints the most circular circle she can manage, going slowly so the line won’t waver. A second circle follows, six inches larger than the first. In between, she paints exactly thirteen dots of oil, perfect tiny filled-in circles spaced with careful precision.

As she puts the finishing touches on the final dot, the oil takes on a faint, silvery sheen that wasn’t there before. Sunny knows that if it weren’t so bright in the kitchen, it would be glowing faintly silver.

_The fanged guard was dead on the ground, and the hand clamped over Sunny's mouth was inhumanly strong and wreathed in silver light. Sunny fought as best she could to shake the figure’s one-handed grip on her wrists— until the silver light swelled and the manacles clicked open, freeing her hands. She stopped in shock._

_"Come quietly or die quietly," her attacker (rescuer?) whispered in her ear. "Either way will suit my purposes." Sunny nodded frantically and bit her tongue to keep from crying out as the figure dragged her out of the tent and into the misty night._

She caps the vial of oil, then reaches back into the box and presses down on the bottom of one of the compartments. With a click, the false bottom slides back, and she takes out the tiny leather-bound book and four short, squat candles, each a different color. She lines the candles up carefully on the table, then gets up to get a match out of the drawer by the sink so she can light them. She opens the book: its pages are paper-thin, covered in a jumble of colored symbols and signs that are impossible to decipher. 

_“In all things, what you see depends on how you look at it,” Aelethan said, lighting the four fat candles. Four flames rose from them: one plain yellow, one blue, one purple, and one blood red._

_Aelethan opened the tiny book and held it in front of each flame in turn. Sunny watched the figures and words on the page change with the colors._

_“No perspective is inherently more valuable than another," Aelethan continued. "But one can be more appropriate for a certain situation."_

_She held the book near the blood-red candle. The shadowy diagrams it revealed made Sunny shudder._

Sunny studies the book in front of the blue candle, then the purple, flipping through pages until she finds the one she wants. She picks up the red chalk and starts to sketch the symbols between the dots of oil. She moves from the purple to the yellow and back to the blue, adding lines and flourishes to the runes as each candle reveals a new set of designs. She holds up the page in front of the red candle, her lips moving slightly as she sounds out the instructions. On this version of the diagram, an illustration of a clawed hand curls around the letters, seeming ready to rip the page in half.

_Sunny leaned her whole weight against the door, her slippers sliding on the flagstone floor. Her fellow defenders were dressed half in armor, half in nightgowns and tunics. The attack had come too furious and sudden for the guards to repel it on their own._

_A thump, and the door jumped open a crucial inch. Claws raked the wall, followed by a scaly arm. The defenders roared and pushed again, and bone snapped with a sickening crack._

_"The girl!" screamed a sibilant voice from the other side of the door. "The human! Give her up! Why die for her sake?"_

Sunny finishes the last rune, and the chalk lines shimmer with the same silvery overtones as the oil. She blows out the candles, then picks up the silver mirror, looking for smudges or specks of dust. She inspects her own reflection, trying to decide if she looks older, or maybe wiser. Mostly she just looks tired, but determined.

_"It's the magic in your blood," Aelethan said. At the bottom of the tower, the battle raged, its sounds muffled by the intervening floors. "She needs it for her spell. Mages can be found even in the nonmagical realms, and some who sully themselves with blood workings think it easier to steal mages from those worlds." Her expression hardened. "They think they won't be missed."_

_"What do I do?" Sunny asked._

_Aelethan smiled. "You do nothing," she said, and magic shot from her fingers, freezing Sunny in place. Then she walked out the door, down towards the sounds of battle._

The mirror goes in the middle of the circle. As soon as it’s set flat on the table, it starts to emit a faint humming noise, almost too quiet for Sunny to hear. Smoky sits up and meows questioningly at her.

“Sorry, bud,” Sunny says. “I know it’s loud.” She gets up, her chair scraping across the floor, and walks to the cabinet where she keeps the cat food. Smoky twines around her ankles, meowing excitedly at the prospect of a second meal so soon after breakfast.

Sunny fills his bowl with food and his water dish from the sink, then moves them both outside the kitchen door. Smoky follows, yowling all the way. She sets down the bowls, then scoops him up and hugs him tight. He squirms in her arms, purring in spite of himself.

“Don’t eat it all at once,” Sunny says, scratching him under his chin. “I don’t know how long this is going to take.”

She sets him down, then goes to make sure the cat flap in the back door is unlocked and close the curtains in the living room. The bag she’s packed is sitting at the bottom of the stairs, full of clothes, medicines, and anything else she could find in the house that might come in handy. She double-checks the lock on the front door, then hefts her bag and heads back to the kitchen.

_"Milady," the acolyte said nervously, "I cannot--"_

_"I don't care!" Sunny snapped. "Where did they go? Where did she take Aelethan?"_

_"Dedicate Aelethan placed a binding charm on me, instructing me not to let you follow if she allowed herself to be taken. She leaves little to chance."_

_Sunny slumped against the windowsill._

_"Ah-- including you, milady," the acolyte said, squinting at her. He waved his hand, and silvery runes appeared, dancing along Sunny's skin. "It would appear that you are to be returned home."_

_"When?"_

_The acolyte leaned closer to read a rune on Sunny's palm. "At any moment."_

Sunny packs the oil, chalk, candles, and book back into the wooden box, then picks up the dagger. The circle is still humming faintly and glowing silver, but neither the sound nor the light are as bright as the book said they should be — not enough ambient magic in the air, probably.

She nods once, then carefully runs the edge of the dagger along her forearm. Blood seeps from the shallow cut and runs up to coat the blade, filling in the grooves and designs that cover it. She holds the blood-coated dagger over the mirror. Suddenly the circle spits and cracks with silver energy, and the humming fills the kitchen.

_She woke up gasping in her own bed, wearing her own clothes. The alarm clock beeped merrily on her bedside table, and Smoky yowled plaintively outside the door, wanting his morning bowl of food._

_Sunny squinted at the clock. The date across the top was the day after she had fallen asleep been transported._

_"But it's been weeks…” she murmured. Already the memories were fading, like a bad dream._

_Only the wooden box on her lap, the last thing she'd been able to grab before Aelethan's transportation spell took hold, told her that it hadn't been a dream at all._

Sunny takes a deep breath and slices downwards in the air. The humming grows to an ear-splitting roar, and a line appears in thin air. The line widens and grows until there’s an oval of emptiness hovering over Sunny’s kitchen table. Sunny inhales, smelling smoke and cinnamon.

She tucks the box into her pack and stands on a chair, stepping carefully onto the edge of the table. The air crackles with energy, making her hair stand on end. She keeps the dagger in her hand — if she did this right, she’ll end up deep in enemy territory, probably right near her adversary.

Wherever they’re keeping Aelethan.

Sunny smiles and steps through the door.


End file.
